Hi, i am writing a paper about netspeak( cyberspeak, e-language , internet language,or cyberlinguistics). but i find different people use this term differently. on the whole, it mainly refer to jargons on the internet. can someone give me advice how to give "netspeak" a defintion? and how about its classification, development and the reasons why netizens prefer to use this particular language online? As far as linguisitcs is concerned, can we say a new branch-- cyberlinguistics has(or will) come into being? thanx.

Suspect there might be an issue of mental processing as well. Writing (paper-based, anyway) is usually done at leisure, and the time of writing and time of reading have no strong connection to one another. Even online - take these forums as an example - there's a lot of measured writing, if you've got something complex to say and aren't expecting an instant reply.

Contrast that with synchronous email and chat. Obviously the aim there is to kick out your messages as fast as possible, to bring the pace of the interchange as close as possible to that of conversation.

This must have at least something to do with the abbreviations that are used: BTW, LOL, IMHO, thx, txt and so on. But - and this is what makes it an issue of processing at least as much as of social in/exclusivity - it's something you'll see not only in chatrooms and mobile phone texting (OK, it's not synchronous but the primitive keyboard really slows you up) but also in a corporate situation where you've got 150 emails to get through before your 10 o'clock.

I once worked for a bit in a call centre where all diary entries to cases were written in this style, because we were monitored on the number of calls taken per hour. Too bad no other bugger could understand a word, but hey...